Monday, April 28, 2008

WoW Update - 28 Apr 2008, Two Weeks Gone

Sorry, I've been busy for the past two weeks with work and a good bit of WoW. I haven't been raiding (much to our RL's dismay) but I did get to alt run Kara with Froufrou and PUG with Avierra at least once.

Since there's too much to recap let me just write in what's different today:

Froufrou - Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless,
Enchant Weapon: Mongoose on my Emerald Ripper, Leatherworking at 365, Shattered Sun Offensive Rep at 11000/21000 Revered, 38 Badges of Justice.

Avierra - Well...

Avierra of the Shattered Sun

She's currently in Prot spec and has 70 Badges of Justice. I'm considering farming 100 Badges for some Prot gear instead of more Holy gear since raid progression seems unlikely at this point.

More WoW-talk this week, or not, as the work is getting somewhat harder.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

WoW Update - 17 April 2008

Forgive my extended absence from this blog, but the truth is that I haven't been playing very much. World of Warcraft has taken a back seat to other things - work, family life, and the bits that come in between. I'm still heavily involved in raiding and occasionally farming on Bleeding Hollow, though.

In the past week and half Froufrou has run Heroic Shattered Halls (didn't finish, didn't loot anything but badges), Heroic Underbog (finished), and farmed QD. I'm quite anxious to get her into the first four bosses of Karazhan, if only to get her better gear to boost her DPS. Avierra, on the other hand, has hardly raided at all.

Other than that, there's not really much to say.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

WoW Update - 10 Apr 2008, ASTIG is Epic Fail

The best part about WoW last night was my running the dailies. I am not being sarcastic or facetious. I really mean it.

After three days of not doing dailies, I logged in to find Bleeding Hollow around 19% into Phase 3. Smith Hauthaa was out, sans her anvil, and there were three new Quel'danas dailies waiting for me.

I must say that farming these dailies as a holy Paladin is a real pain in the ass. Isorla concurs, adding that DPS classes have it much easier. The Quel'danas dailies took Avierra nearly two hours to complete. Froufrou finished them in forty-five minutes.

Avierra marched into Gruul's Lair with ASTIG, but downed only High King Maulgar. We simply had too many melee classes in the raid. Two rogues, five warriors and a feral druid meant that we would have no chance of downing Gruul. During Ground Slam the melee classes would smash into the ranged DPS and the healers. In the end we called it a night with the intention of finishing the instance the next evening.

ASTIG is currently going through so many problems and to be candid, I'm glad I'm not in it any more. I am happy to provide a different point of view if asked, and of course I am happy to raid with ASTIG, but I am really unwilling to return. It really upsets me, though, that my former Guildmates can't seem to work out their issues.

Anyway, Gruul dies tonight, assuming that we can put together a good raid.

Monday, April 7, 2008

WoW Update - 7 Apr 2008

I'm blogging from the beach. How lame is that? I'll make this quick as there's a nice breakfast waiting for me in the dining area.

Avierra and Froufrou each managed to finish all their dailies on Friday and Saturday, which propelled Avierra to Revered with the Shattered Sun Offensive and Froufrou to Friendly. What sealed the deal was Froufrou running Magister's Terrace (and finishing it!) As usual, Froufrou died just before Kael'thas bit the dust. I really have to learn to play her better.

Froufrou the lootwhore picked up a Cloak of the Coming Night, Nightstrike, and best of all, a Phoenix Hatchling.

Avi, on the other hand, flubbed her Magtheridon's Lair raid. ASTIG failed to down Magtheridon - in an epic way, no less. As I've no wish to dwell on that bad experience, I won't set it down here. Let's just chalk it up to learning the learning curve and leave it at that.

Friday, April 4, 2008

WoW Update - 4 April 2008

First off, the bad(?) news... no World of Warcraft for me this weekend. The Powers That Be have declared a long weekend (Monday is a national holiday, woot), so instead of spending hours in front of my computer thinking about getting drunk, I will actually be getting drunk at the beach.

Avierra's Shattered Sun reputation is now comfortably at 11k/12k Honored. By this evening, assuming I have some time to run dailies, I'll hit Revered and be extra happy. The completion of the portal event means an extra daily to do on Quel'danas, which is fantastic for both rep and cash.

But enough about Avierra... it's time to talk about Froufrou.

Last night Anyssa scheduled a Karazhan run, but she overbooked her healers. She offered to step back from the raid, but instead I removed Avierra and joined the raid as Froufrou.

I know I've brought up Froufrou in this blog before, but I've never gone into the history of my beloved gnome rogue. To start with, she wasn't really mine to begin with. In 2005 I was able to get my then-fiancee to join me in Azeroth. We got a second World of Warcraft account for her, and we both rolled toons that we leveled along with some other RL friends. Yz was among that 'batch' of toons, and is probably the only one still playing today. The others have since moved on from WoW.

At some point in the mid-thirties my fiancee found herself getting bored. Our friends had started to stray, so she asked me to level her character for her. So level Froufrou I did - taking it from level 34 to level 60 in around three months while my main, Avierra, was raiding Molten Core and Zul'gurub. When Froufrou hit 60, I gleefully told my (new) wife that her gnome was ready.

Of course, she never came back to play it. She had other things occupying her mind at that point.

So when Azeroth gave way to Outland, I found myself with two 60's to level. Avierra was my main and favored character; I took her to 70 with ease. And despite my having spent time on Froufrou, I wasn't so comfortable with her; it took me almost three months to get her the ten levels to 70.

Once I hit 70 with Froufrou, though, I farmed Consortium and Scryer reps, aiming for the epic daggers Guile of Khoraazi and Retainer's Blade. And then I stopped. Froufrou became my farming toon while Avierra became my raiding toon. Before I took my last hiatus I had almost 4000 gold on Froufrou... and around 300 on Avierra. Frou has since exalted with the Skyguard and is revered with Ogri'la... but is mostly just honored in the instance factions.

I've since run Karazhan once with Froufrou.

So last night I was pseudo-RL while Anyssa took it easy. We downed Attumen, Moroes, Maiden and the Opera Event (crone). Froufrou walked away with 7 Badges of Justice, Emerald Ripper (to replace Guile of Khoraazi), and the Zierhut's Lost Treads. Not bad for a noob rogue who needs to learn to raid.

I logged out with a big smile on my face and a sense that I'd be raiding with Froufrou again. It's nice to have something else to do in a raid besides heal.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

WoW Update - 3 April 2008

We had a Gruul's Lair run last night, one of maybe 3 or 4 more that ASTIG will do before removing it from the schedule of raids. I know people are excited about running Black Temple and Hyjal, but I'm not really very optimistic about the prospect of running these instances with ASTIG at the moment. Maybe I'm just burning out as a raider; God knows that Supsop, Anyssa and Isorla are already kind of burned out.

(If not for the badges, I wouldn't really be running Karazhan at all. The only things I still want from there are the Libram of Souls Redeemed and Pauldrons of the Justice Seeker, and even those aren't critical upgrades since I'm quite happy with my Merciless Gladiator's Ornamented Spaulders and can purchase a Libram of Mending.)

Gruul's Lair went by pretty quickly; there were a lot of dead raiders, but there were also a lot of dead ogres after the dust cleared. I wasn't healing so well, but maybe that was because I was on the main tank. Naturally I was overhealing a lot.

Not having any ASTIG DKP, I sat out the looting. I picked up my 5 Badges, bringing Avierra to 145. Only 30 more to go before I start to feel comfortable - I've decided to pick up both the Ecclesiastical Cuirass and the High Justicar's Legplates. I know that I can pick up the legplates right now and that I don't have to wait for the Shattered Sun badge vendor, but I'd rather not spend badges I don't have as I want the chestpiece quite badly.

After the run, I respecced to prot and walked into Magister's Terrace with Nataliandrea (resto shaman), Herri, Larrygibb and Arindul (hunter). We finally downed Kael'thas, unlocking Heroic Magister's Terrace for us and giving us a nice amount of reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive. At this moment, Avierra is at 8.8k Honored, which means I have just over 22k rep to go until Avi hits Exalted.

I didn't complete all my SSO dailies yesterday as I was quite sleepy already, but the Magister's Terrace run more than made up for it. I'll probably hit Revered this weekend. And if the dailies continue to give reputation all the way till Exalted, it shouldn't take too much time to exalt with the Shattered Sun Offensive.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Yesterday, My Enemy

While questing on the Isle of Quel'danas yesterday I caught the attention of an Orc Warrior. As I play a Human Paladin, you can imagine that I was not particularly happy about this development. He hadn't attacked me yet, so I just made sure I was healed up and ready for a fight. I switched to Retribution Aura and braced myself.

Instead of charging into me, he threw me a /wave. Happy to have been spared an unwelcome gank, I /waved back. He /flirted. I /flirted back.

And so it went. I ran into him a couple more times as I was turning in quests, and each time we would /wave and /flirt and move along. I didn't think anything more of it until I got a tell from a level 40 human pally.

It turns out that the pally was my new friend's alt - probably on a second account, as Bleeding Hollow is a PVP server. He asked me if I remembered him from pre-TBC; I didn't. He said that he'd run into me on the boat to Ratchet before and that he'd ganked me then. And then he said that he remembered running into me in WPL and ganking me again... and I was so angry I searched the whole zone for him to exact revenge.

To be honest, I don't really remember. It certainly sounds like something I would do. I hate being ganked. Anyone who was a paladin pre-TBC no doubt felt the same. I looked up to paladins like Jessicalight who were consistently at the top of the PVP rankings, but I had no clue how to PVP as a paladin (not that I've got much of a clue today).

And to be honest again, I don't really remember the names of the people who gank me. I just don't like dwelling on these things. I remember Bocarwa, but that's because he became one of Anyssa's friends after he'd ganked her maybe a dozen times. But Necro-whatever, who tried to gank me in Hellfire Peninsula the other day, and who really irritated the Alliance guys in Quel'danas... I won't really remember him much. Because a few months down the line there'll be another bored asshat trying to ruin my day.

I finished up my quests and said goodbye to my new friend. It's nice to feel remembered. Avierra's been on Bleeding Hollow for years and I hadn't realized how much like home it's become. I'm probably one of the oldest characters on the server and I still remember some of the old Guilds that used to dominate Bleeding Hollow. I remember the warm fuzzy feeling of coming back to BH after a four-month hiatus and getting tells from people in Shattrath welcoming me back. That was a good feeling. I should try to hold on to that.

I tried to /friend my new Horde buddy, but unfortunately Blizzard doesn't allow cross-faction friends. Pfft. Typical Blizzard. I wonder how Thrall and Jaina keep in touch.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

WoW Update - 1 Apr 2008

It was a good day for WoW. Working from home meant that I had access to the dailies, which of course I was happy to be able to do. I've no idea how I'm going to do them tomorrow - I'll probably have to wake up early on Wednesday morning to do even the Shattered Sun dailies - but it's only for, what, a month? Bleeding Hollow is progressing pretty slowly from all accounts.

By the time 9 pm rolled around, I was happily at 3000+/12000 Honored with the Shattered Sun Offensive. Just 30,000 more rep to go - and I think that's doable, especially if I can spam Magister's Terrace next weekend.

But Karazhan was a good run. We didn't get to down a lot of bosses. Three wipes on Nightbane meant we were going to run short of time. But Avi looted a lot, and that's what counts...

By the end of the run we'd downed Nightbane (2 Badges of Justice), Illhoof (2 Badges, Breastplate of the Lightbinder), Aran (2 Badges, Pendant of the Violet Eye) and finished Chess (2 Badges, Legplates of the Innocent).